A note on an L-approach for solving the manufacturer's pallet loading problem

An L-approach for packing (l, w)-rectangles into an (L,W)-rectangle was introduced in an earlier work by Lins, Lins and Morabito. They conjecture that the L-approach is exact and point out its runtime requirements as the main drawback. In this note it is shown that, by simply using a different data structure, the runtime is considerably reduced in spite of larger (but affordable) memory requirements. This reduction is important for practical purposes since it makes the algorithm much more acceptable for supporting actual decisions in pallet loading. Intensive numerical experiments showing the efficiency and effectiveness of the algorithm are presented.